Dr. Steed

America's elderly prisoner boom

Samuel Baxter, Phillip Burdick, Glenn Crites, Dr. Steed, Glenn Kreitz

The rapid aging of the U.S. prison population has sparked the "Goldcoats" volunteer program at facilities like California Men's Colony, where elderly inmates provide low-cost peer care and protection to their vulnerable, prematurely aging counterparts. This initiative addresses critical health and safety gaps caused by dementia and predation while offering participants like life-sentence prisoner Samuel Baxter a mechanism for mutual survival and future security. Simultaneously, grief counselor Philip Burdick supports terminally ill inmates through hospice services, highlighting a systemic shift where legislative reforms have concentrated aging, high-risk populations in state prisons without adequate external resources for release.